A Hungarian physicist finds that the web's organizing principles aren't all that different from "six degrees of Kevin Bacon."

The
outer limits of the worldwide web can feel like an infinite fraying of
loose ends and time-sucking wormholes. But the web's estimated 14
billion individual pages and 1 trillion documents are actually connected
more efficiently than anyone might reasonably imagine.

Researchers,
publishing their findings in the Philosophical Transactions of the
Royal Society, have discovered that you can navigate from any single
page on the web to any other page in a mere 19 clicks or less. The
principle is similar to the game "six degrees of Kevin Bacon," except
with obscure, fringe-y GeoCities pages instead of, say, Cameron Diaz.

The
19-click threshold was discovered by Hungarian physicist Albert-Laszlo
Barabasi, who used computer simulations to get a better grasp of the
web's vast, unmapped architecture.

Here's where things get
particularly fascinating: Even though the web is growing at an
unprecedented rate — some estimates suggest as many as 3.7 million new
domains are registered every month — Barabasi claims the magic number 19
will hold true until the last ethernet cable on Earth crumbles into
dust.

How can this be? According to Smithsonian Mag, Barabasi
argues that the web, while it may seem random, is actually arranged "in
an interconnected hierarchy of organizational themes, including region,
country, and subject area." In that sense, it doesn't matter how much
bigger the web gets, since it will always be organized in a similar way.

How
does this organization work? Look at this website's navigation bar up
above, for example. Or scroll to the bottom of Wikipedia to see data
organized by different languages. The basic organizing principles
employed by search engines, aggregators, and other big, connecting nodes
like Reddit help to make the web a less messy place overall. In fact,
these large internet hubs are what make getting from Point A to Point B
possible in the first place — like the LAXs and JFKs of the digital
globe.

So go ahead. Give it a shot. We can't guarantee you'll be
able to pull off 19 clicks at first blush. But, in the spirit of
interconnectedness, we do recommend that you try starting your journey
from here :-)